Computational Linguistics
Editor's Report for 2003-2004
Robert Dale
This report covers my first year as editor. My approach over the year
was to see how the journal operates, avoiding radical changes that
attempt to fix things that aren't broken; but at the same time the
editorial board has discussed a number of potential changes to the
journal:
-the inclusion of submission and acceptance dates on published papers:
this will take effect from the next issue;
-fast track processing of best papers from conferences: we decided
against any special treatment for best paper award winners, but did
agree that positively soliciting revised versions as possible journal
publications was appropriate;
-timely electronic publication: MIT Press has promised to provide a
possible model for how this would work, which I should be have
received By the time of the Exec meeting.
On the more routine side, I had hoped to bring down our turnaround
time for papers this year through a rigorous process of frequent
reminders. initially this seemed to be going well, but our final
figures for the year are marginally worse than the previous year:
Time to first decision:
For 2001 papers: 110 days
For 2002 papers: 127 days
For 2003 papers: 129 days
For the 2003 papers, there were 59 long papers with an average time to
first decision of 130 days, and 7 short papers with an average time to
first decision of 117 days. We'll try to tighten this up over the next
year.
Here's the traditional 'disposition by first decision' table:
Decision 2004 to 28/6 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998
Submitted 30 65 65 57 64 47 48
Accept 2 16 23 18 15 13 9
Reject 7 20 20 12 11 9 7
Resubmit as squib 0 2 2 2 1 3 0
Revise and resubmit 4 25 18 22 27 12 4
Withdrawn 0 0 2 3 3 2 0
No decision 17 2 0 0 7 8 28
Here's the breakdown by country of first author for the 2003 and 2004
papers:
2003 2004
Europe
Bulgaria 1
Finland 3
France 3 2
Germany 4
Iran 2
Israel 1 1
Italy 1
Netherlands 1 1
Poland 1 2
Portugal 2
Romania 1
Slovenia 1
Spain 2 2
Sweden 2
Turkey 1
United Kingdom 7 5
North America
Canada 5 1
Mexico 1
United States 21 5
Asia
Hong Kong 3
India 1 2
Japan 2 1
Korea 1
Taiwan 2
Thailand 1
South America
Brazil 1 2
Total 65 30
In summary, the journal remains healthy and appears to be maintaining
its prestige value; major items for the year ahead are improving our
turnaround time, moving to electronic publication, and considering the
inclusion of new kinds of content in the journal.